The Argosy, Vol. 83 No. 1 — page 142: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

132 women. His heart leaped with a premo- nition. It was Mlle. de Vallieres and an elderly companion—the Countess de Saint- Hilaire. The countess was one of those ladies usually referred to as “‘a dear old soul’”— plump, sixty, as girlish as might be, with more than a trace of her early beauty and a sort of afterglow of romance about her. She greeted Chan with a complacency almost disconcerting, a suggestion in it that youth would be served and that she was perfectly aware that this meeting of the American and the Princess Blanche was a cut and dried affair. Otherwise, the interchange of courtesies was as com- monplace as the meeting of three friends in a village street. Yet Chan’s heart had not ceased its ex- citing pounding. It seemed impossible that the princess and the elderly countess should be unaware of it. Perhaps they were not unaware of it. The garden lay about them nebulous in the blue starlight. It was fragrant with its masses of sleeping flowers—lilacs and roses, acacia and wild-grape. The Cha- teau Lenoir, dark for the most part, so far as its outward appearance was con- cerned, had become a stronghold of all the things that French history has ever stood for—intrigue and tragedy, self-sacrifice and visions. “Let us walk,” said the princess softly. Chan gallantly assisted the Countess de Saint-Hilaire to her feet. The countess accepted his aid gracefully. “Alas,” she said, “my career is fin- ished.” She smiled. Chan wondered what sort of a career she meant. Here in the star- light he had a picture of what she might have looked like thirty or forty years ago —very fair, very romantic, very ready to become a victim to some marriage of con- venience; faithful; gradually exchanging the expected consolation of earthly love for the more certain consolation of her churchly devotions. Chan ventured to express something of his thought. THE ARGOSY. “If it be permitted me to say so,” he declared, “I think that you are still as beautiful as any one could be.” He was doubly rewarded. The countess laughed softly as she took his arm. On his other arm he felt a reassuring pressure from the hand that the Princess Blanche had placed there. Up the path they passed until they were on a terrace under the shadow of the chateau. The high windows near them were closed and heavily curtained, but there came to them a suggestion of move- ment and activity within. “Why,” whispered Mlle. de Vallieres, “did you so suddenly decide to-day to be- come our cousin’s secretary?” Ever since Chan could remember it had been a trick of his tongue and his brain to speak the truth, spontaneously, without premeditation, often when it would have been better, perhaps, to have shaded the truth just a trifle, or, at least, to have maintained silence. Before he could stop now to think, his tongue and his brain were up to their old trick again. His answer frightened him. “Tt was because,” he whispered, “—it was because of the look I saw in your eyes.” From the curtained windows there came a greater gust of sound. It was a sub- dued cheer: “Vive le Roi!” “Long live the king!” And he had dared to say what he had just said to the cousin of the king they were acclaiaing in there. CHAPTER XIV. “THE HOPE OF FRANCE.” "THE Princess Blanche gave Chan a glance of veiled fire. “Let us go in,” she said. “I know ofa Secret passage from which we can look down into the banquet-room. Jean won’t mind.” She corrected herself as by an afterthought. ‘His majesty won’t mind.” Her dark eyes met Chan’s again. This CORMICGLOOOKS (C@